Accounting

The main area that this study aims to cover is the role and responsibilities of the Board of Directors in an organization, especially in reference to the Petrochemical Industry in Saudi Arabia.

The Methodology
The Methodology will be mainly based on ethnography. According to ethnographic principles of research the study would be based on qualitative date and would require research to be done across the field of study using methods of interviews, participant observation and detailed open ended questionnaires (Ketchen  Bergh, 2005).

Ethnography is to study a way of life and ethnography can takes various forms from participant observation to in-depth interviews. Ethnography, however, is a very tiring process and can consume a lot of researchers time. Another problem associated with ethnography is that the researcher may get over involved in the subject of research and may lose himself in the research process. Also, the researcher may influence people with his presence. Moreover, the problem with ethnography is that the research may not be reliable and cannot be repeated as people would not be able to repeat thee research. The researcher may, however, prefer to use ethnography to get an in-depth analysis of the research subject and would want to get a detailed account of the organization under consideration.

Comparison of Ethnography with other Methods
If other research methods are compared under the light of ethnographic research a clear identification can be made of the advantages and the disadvantages of ethnography over other research methods. Firstly, the research is not objective or reliable as the sample size is small and would not clearly identify the overall roles of the BOD in allvariety of organizations. On the other hand, questionnaires may help collecting a wide range of data across a large sample size and would be more objective. However, the data would be truly valid and representative of the sample size that is being studied. Although, ethnographic research would be representative for the particular sample size in the organization, it would fail to show the roles of BOD across various organizations. Ethnography is more time consuming and requires greater involvement from the researcher and can have a researcher bias. Whereas, as compared to grounded theory, ethnography is relatively easier and faster to carry out as no hypothesis has to be made before the data is collected and no theory evaluation takes place. Ethnography finds data which is then converted into a theory while grounded theory helps in finding data for a theory which has been established before the collection of data. Moreover, comparative analysis method compares two or more subjects which are then analyzed and a theory is established. However, this method is not valid for this particular research as the researcher does not want to look at the roles of the BOD of selective organizations the research seeks to assess the generalized roles of BOD in a petrochemical industry in particular. Case studies will not even provide the researcher with the best form of data as the case studies are concentrated on only a single organization which is analyzed in greater detail. Hence, ethnography is most suitable for this research as it would allow the researcher to carry out a detailed analysis over the whole industry.

There are three steps while an ethnographic research is being conducted. Firstly, the researcher should do a field analysis. Field analysis should be followed by formal analysis and then by writing and interpreting that research. Field analysis may be very critical as it helps the gathering of the main data. This process is the most difficult and time consuming and may also harm the researcher. However, in the particular research of the roles of the BOD the researcher is not threatened as this is not a risky subject to study as compared to studies related to subjects like the behaviour of juvenile delinquents (Goddard  Melville, 2007).Writing and interpreting are also very crucial steps as they actually convey what has been observed by the researcher. If these steps are not carried out properly then the whole purpose of the study may become futile. If the writing is not done properly then the research may not be categorized as value free. Hence, the writer should be careful not to assess or judge the doings of the organizations based on own values.

To achieve valuable and first hand information, the study will have to be carried out across a wide number of organizations to judge the varying roles of the Board of Directors (BOD) across different companies (Bryman, Lewis-Beck,  Liao, 2004). The main focus, however, would be the Petrochemical Industry in Saudi Arabia. The researcher can conduct interviews with various organizations in Saudi Arabia and can get information. Semi structured interviews can be used to conduct research to collect the required quantitative and qualitative data which would then support the conduction of the ethnographic research. The main point of concern while designing this type of an interview would be to choose questions which would collect the required data for further research to be facilitated (Goddard  Melville, 2007).

However, it should be noted that the methodology of interviews could be misleading if bias is involved. It may be unreliable if people give a misleading image due to a bias against the management or the members of the board (Ketchen  Bergh, 2005). Moreover, people can feel pressurized by the interviews and may reproduce misleading responses favouring the board even if they believe something else to be the case. Peoples perspectives keep changing according to their experiences and encounters with the BOD and hence, they may give varying views if the interviews are conducted after they had a good interaction from when they would have a negative interaction (Kothari, 2008). Qualitative data would be extremely difficult to collect and quantify and it would be difficult to express it in a form of a study. Moreover, qualitative data allows only a limited number of people to be interviewed as it is detailed and time consuming and requires the interviewer to build up a rapport with the interviewees, this would consume a lot of time (Bryman, Lewis-Beck,  Liao 2004).
It should however, be noted that the research method is not completely unstructured interviews, in fact, semi structured interviews would be held to give the interviews some organized order and to make the research comparatively more objective and systematic (Goddard  Melville, 2007).

The interviewer however, can negate the negative effects of a detailed interview and interviewees bias by adopting a friendly and approachable attitude (Goddard  Melville, 2007). Also, an interviewer should ask questions in an easy language which can be easily understood by the interviewee, moreover, the interviewer should make sure that he or she does not violate the cultural beliefs and values held by the interviewee so that the interviewee may not feel offended while answering the question (Bryman, Lewis-Beck,  Liao 2004). Also the interviewer should not ask biased or leading questions and should not try to direct an answer given by the interviewee (Kothari, 2008).

The semi structured interviews are based on a structure which probes some closed and structured questions to the respondent, while, at the same time there are a few open ended questions which allow collection of a qualitative form of data.  Interviews can also gather a large sample as compared to participant observation. This makes generalization more appropriate and also makes the data more representative however, as compared to questionnaires they may not be valid. Also, respondents may lie or may forget actual information which may make the results misleading (Kumar, 2008).

A focus group will not be a good approach to deal with the topic of study. The reason to avoid focus group is that it would bring with itself a lot of superficial details and biases held by different people in the organization. Interviews would be an efficient way to collect data from the concerned people (Kumar, 2008). On the other hand focus groups would involve a lot of conflict and politics within the organization and would consume a lot of time and energy and would also be unnecessary. During the conduction of an interview on a focus group a lot of time is lost as irrelevant topics come into focus than important and relevant topics (Kumar, 2008). An interviewer tends to lose control of the group than compared to the one to one interview.  Moreover, a focus group is also relatively a very small size of people and will hinder diversity in views (Bryman, Lewis-Beck,  Liao, 2004).

Focus Groups are also not good in conducting this particular research as these groups cannot maintain confidentiality and privacy as there are many people involved in the group who may threaten confidentiality. Most organizations would not want to answer probing questions about their daily organizational decision making as they would be concerned about the information that they would be giving indirectly to their competitors. Moreover, people involved in focus groups may start affecting each other in their views and decisions. Also, the moderator can influence the views of people. If the moderator is biased, there is a chance that he may influence the opinion presented by people. Focus groups, hence, would not be an efficient way to collect data for this study (Kothari, 2008).

Ethical considerations are extremely important while conducting ethnographic research. Firstly, it should be made sure that the participants involved in research are fully aware that the research is being carried. Moreover, the consent of the participant should be taken while conducting research. It should be made sure that the participation of people in the study would not harm or hurt them in anyway. For example an employee may get dismissed because of his or her participation in the research. It should be taken into consideration that the participants do not display any harmful or illegal behaviour while the research is being conducted. Last but not the least, the confidentiality should be maintained thoroughly as the participants may leak out some of the information which is being shared with them and that information may be an organizations secret and may affect some participants (Bryman, Lewis-Beck,  Liao 2004). .

The research methodology would allow the researcher to observe the biases of the participants and the way qualitative data proves to be better than quantitative data as it helps in empowering the researcher with sufficient relevant and first hand knowledge. The research would also make the researcher realize the internal politics within the organizations and the conflict that is present (Ketchen  Bergh, 2005).