A - Appendix A: Methodology of the Study

Summary

The research in this book is based on a series of research efforts, in the course of which various types of data were collected. This appendix briefly outlines the methodological approach of the study, describes the various research efforts that together constitute the book, and describes the specific data employed in the analysis.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

This is a multimethod research project. However, the central methodological approach of the study is the use of a detailed ethnohistorical case study of the software industry as an entry point for investigating the space for local economic development and political shaping of development in the face of economic globalization. In essence, the research employed an “extended case method” (Burawoy, 1998): the growth of the software industry in Ireland was taken as an anomalous case for theories of globalization, which could not explain the emergence of such a dense local agglomeration under the guidance of the state. The task of explaining this anomaly became the basis for reformulating existing theories of globalization (as discussed in Chapter 2).

Although the case-study approach was the foundation of the study, I drew on various research methods and logics at different stages. I employed a “logic of variation” at times in the analysis, particularly with regard to establishing the salience of state intervention in shaping software firms (see especially Chapters 5 and 6). This was combined throughout with ethnographic data from documents and interviews that shed light on the precise character of this “state effect.”