Advancing qualitative meta-analyses: A realist and a constructivist approch

Abstract

Qualitative meta-analyses have gained increasing attention among scholars in management and organization theory. However, existing approaches reveal some inconsistencies that need to be overcome in order to unfold the full potential of the method. First, while previous approaches refer to a version of realism that is problematic as it either overlaps with notions of interpretivism or positivism, a purely constructivist perspective of knowledge synthesis is entirely absent in the literature. Second, most previous qualitative meta-studies have drawn primarily on variance instead of process approaches to synthesize existing findings which is surprising as understanding processes is a key focus in qualitative research. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to present two very different approaches for conducting a qualitative meta-analysis that are informed by two opposing philosophical positions. These are, as we suggest, a realist and a constructivist research design of a qualitative meta-analysis. We illustrate these two approaches in the context of process theorizing. As a result, we show how both approaches differ in synthesizing qualitative evidence, show what kind of outcomes they generate, and finally discuss different quality criteria to evaluate both types of meta-analyses.