Editorial

Citation

Burton, B. (2015), "Editorial", Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Vol. 7 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRFM-03-2015-0012

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Volume 7, Issue 2

A warm welcome to the second issue of Qualitative Research in Financial Markets for 2015. Shortly prior to putting this issue together, we received notification that QRFM has been included in the new ABS Academic Journal Guide. Notwithstanding the debate about the dangers of academia becoming overly concerned about the inclusion of research outlets on such lists, this is an important practical step for the journal. The result reflects the hard work of a large number of individuals, including Valerie Robillard and her team at Emerald, as well as the editorial board members, authors and reviewers, who have played such a key role in getting QRFM to this stage.

The five articles published in this issue take us to a total of 85 since the journal’s inception in 2009. The success in attracting such a wide variety of work – in terms of geographical site, methodological approach and identifiable implications – is something which continues to encourage me and fully justifies Emerald’s decision nearly seven years ago to support QRFM’s launch. On this occasion, I would particularly like to highlight the international spread of the published papers. One of the many strengths of qualitative work in finance is that it facilitates research into market functions in nations where the large-scale, reliable, quantitative databases required to permit robust aggregate econometric analysis do not yet exist. QRFM has, inter alia, published studies from Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey and the UAE, as well as work examining Sub-Saharan Africa and Islamic North Africa in aggregate. The interest in these studies – as evidenced by the numbers of downloads they generate as well as more informal feedback – is vast and QRFM’s blend of work from the countries most commonly employed as research sites and those used far less regularly is one of this publication’s key strengths.

A further theme that is starting to emerge from the papers published in QRFM is the multitude of ways in which qualitative research tools can be used to generate meaningful insights into firm and market behaviour. To that end, I would encourage the submission of work that explicitly examines the methodological issues these approaches raise. This is an area in which a special issue might now be appropriate so please let me know if this is something you might be interested in running with. (The formal call for papers for the special issue on corporate governance in emerging countries will be appearing soon, possibly by the time you read this, but in the meantime please continue to e-mail the editor, Dr Theresa Dunne, at mailto:t.m.dunne@dundee.ac.uk with queries and expressions of interest). Thanks to all of those who have expressed an interest in getting involved with the QRFM-associated Centre for Qualitative Research in Finance. This is much appreciated and I will be in contact with those who have been in touch on this basis soon.

Finally, best wishes to Louise Lister, who is leaving her position as Editorial Assistant for QRFM, and a warm welcome to Ginny Chapman, who is taking over in this capacity. Louise has played a major role in ensuring and supporting the move to introduce a fourth annual issue of the journal, as well as being heavily involved more generally in the growing number of tasks involved in academic publication in these the days of on-line delivery and open access.

Bruce Burton