This paper is focused on validity in mixed methods research or what we refer to more broadly as mixed research. However, to understand the validity issue (i.e., quality) in mixed research, a brief review of some related discussions in quantitative and qualitative research will be helpful for orientation. Because these issues have been discussed elsewhere in great detail, we provide only brief summaries of those literatures, but first we want to make a few introductory comments about our general approach to research validity or quality. We try to take a "middle of the road" position, seeing some truth and insight to be gained from multiple perspectives. Our approach is only one among many, and we recommend that readers examine additional perspectives as more work is carried out in this emerging area in mixed methods research as well as in the more traditional areas of qualitative and quantitative research quality. The "validity" issue, at least as we use the term, is not about singular truths, and it certainly is not limited to quantitative measurement; rather, by validity we mean that a research study, its parts, the conclusions drawn, and the applications based on it can be of high or low quality, or somewhere in between. Research needs to be defensible to the research and practice communities for whom research is produced and used. The arbiters of research quality will be the research stakeholders, which means that the quality or validity issue can have subjective, intersubjective, and objective components and influences. At the same time, research is something about which we can "rationally" speak, and usually, after considering our external and our internal or epistemic standards, we can meaningfully assert that some research is of higher quality for certain purposes than is other research We aim our sense of justification at the research community that sees many advantages to sometimes using both qualitative and quantitative research in their single or highly related sets of research studies. One of the exciting results of much mixed research is that in a single study practical questions can be addressed, different perspectives can be examined, and if well documented, practitioners can obtain some sense of what might be useful in their local situations. We do not want to oversell mixed research, however; the evidence will be in the results. If mixed research produces useful results over time, as well as useful theory, then progress will have been made. We agree with Kurt Lewin's statement that "There is nothing so practical as a good theory" (Lewin, 1952, p. 169), and we hope that all researchers, including mixed researchers, will attempt to produce good theories and other research works. Validity in Quantitative Research In quantitative research, discussions of "validity" have been common and the importance of validity has been long accepted, and this is well documented in the literature. Building on the seminal works of Campbell and Stanley Another very important work in validity in quantitative research is found in Shadish, Validity in Qualitative Research In the qualitative research paradigm, a primary focus is for researchers to capture authentically the lived experiences of people. As noted by 2 Denzin and Lincoln (2005) also argue for "a serious rethinking of such terms as validity, generalizability, and reliability, terms already retheorized in postpositivist…, constructivist-naturalistic…, feminist…, interpretive…, poststructural…, and critical…discourses. This problem asks, 'How are qualitative studies to be evaluated in the contemporary, poststructural moment? '" (pp. 19-20). 3, 4 Part of their solution to the "validity issue" has been to reconceptualize traditional quantitative validity concepts and to use labels that are more acceptable to qualitative researchers Another useful classification for validity in qualitative research was provided by

This paper explores four issues that have emerged from the research on social, cognitive and teaching presence in an online community of inquiry. The early research in the area of online communities of inquiry has raised several issues with regard to the creation and maintenance of social, cognitive and teaching presence that require further research and analysis. The other overarching issue is the methodological validity associated with the community of inquiry framework. The first issue is about shifting social presence from socio-emotional support to a focus on group cohesion (from personal to purposeful relationships). The second issue concerns the progressive development of cognitive presence (inquiry) from exploration to resolution. That is, moving discussion beyond the exploration phase. The third issue has to do with how we conceive of teaching presence (design, facilitation, direct instruction). More specifically, is there an important distinction between facilitation and direct instruction? Finally, the methodological issue concerns qualitative transcript analysis and the validity of the coding protocol.

Abstract. The major contributor to global management knowledge is scholarship in developed economies, especially in North America and Western Europe. The development of a global management knowledge base lags behind the globalization of business enterprises. With the emergence of many developing economies around the world, progress in building the body of global management knowledge could be enhanced by encouraging high quality indigenous research in these novel contexts. This essay is a complementary piece to the APJM Special Issue on Asian Management Research: Frontiers and Challenges (August 2002). It discusses three types of global management models through two types of context-sensitive research. It argues the need for high quality indigenous research, using the influential studies on management in the Chinese context as illustrations. It offers guidelines on conducting high quality indigenous research that produces contextualized knowledge on the one hand and contributes to global knowledge on the other.

The work described in this paper is an investigation of COTS-based software development within a particular NASA environment, with an emphasis on the processes used. Fifteen projects using a COTS-based approach were studied and their actual process was documented. This process is evaluated to identify essential differences in comparison to traditional software development. The main differences, and the activities for which projects require more guidance, are requirements definition and COTS selection, high level design, integration and testing. Starting from these empirical observations, a new process and guidelines for COTS-based development are developed and briefly presented. The new process is currently under experimentation.

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We examine how entrepreneurs shape organizational boundaries and construct mar-kets through an inductive, longitudinal study of five ventures. Our central contribution is a framework of how successful entrepreneurs attempt to dominate nascent markets by co-constructing organizational boundaries and market niches using three processes: claiming, demarcating, and controlling a market. We propose that power is the un-derlying boundary logic and indicate the “soft-power ” strategies by which entrepre-neurs compete in highly ambiguous markets. Overall, we develop a holistic view of organizational boundaries and offer insights into institutional entrepreneurship and resource dependence theories. Our most important contribution is reinvigorating the study of interorganizational power. Organizational boundaries are fundamental. Ev-ery organization needs to establish its boundary to distinguish the organization from the environment and define its domain of action (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006; Scott, 2003). Given this central role, the phe-nomenon of organizational boundaries has been addressed with a set of rich theoretical perspectives (Santos & Eisenhardt, 2005). A first line of research adopts an exchange efficiency view, looking at cost minimization as a key driver of boundaries (Dyer, 1996; Williamson, 1981, 1991). In a second stream, organizational boundaries are examined through a power lens, with a focus on how organizations can control their exchange relations (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Thompson, 1967). Other research relies on a competence view, in which the evolving resources and capabilities of organizations shape their

into cally to a process of national selection. This article describes the process used, presents feedback from the assessors and candidates involved, and discusses possible improvements for future rounds.

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This article addresses the concern for effective web site design by means of the conceptualization and empirical validation of a web site user satisfaction construct. Based on IS success theory, hypermedia design theory, a qualitative exploratory pilot study, and a quantitative online critical incident technique, we introduce and define the construct of web site user satisfaction, explore its dimensionality, provide empirical validation of the construct and its underlying dimensionality, develop a standardized instrument with desirable psychometric properties for measuring WUS, and explore the measure's theoretical and practical application.