Mapping the research approach of asset management studies in the petroleum industry

The purpose of this paper is to study the current research approaches in asset management (AM), to evaluate some of the prevalent research methods in AM studies and to summarize the result into a building-block research that may provide design guidelines in AM studies.

AM publications were selected for this study using by online search engines and the publications were classified based on the appropriate research approaches. The results will be discussed and a suitable building-block research for AM studies will be constructed based on the identified research approaches.

The paper identifies, analyses and validates the research approaches found in a sample of online AM publications. The research-approaches and their associated methods will be discussed to develop understanding of the context of these approaches in AM research.

The paper limits the study in publications within the AM field in the petroleum industry. However, the research methods that are presented covers the most common research methods found in publications. Thus, although the sample of publications may not represent the entire population, the same approach and result can be used in similar topics and conditions.

Researchers or practitioners can benefit from the building blocks of research to develop a research design for AM studies. Moreover, the paper also provides information on common research methods and data gathering techniques that can be used for similar studies.