The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the quandaries or difficult choices that affect detailed research design as well as the 'big' orientations or paradigms that motivate studies in the field of business and management research. Many of these choices and decisions are now commonly assumed to be mere preferences, no longer worthy of debate. As in the case of whether to collect data that is say, more easily quantified than qualified. Or whether the demands of practice are incommensurable with those of the social sciences. Such oppositions and tensions are discussed here in the context of recent surveys of managerial work.

Assessing the quality of qualitative research to ensure rigour in the findings is critical, especially if findings are to contribute to theory and be utilised in practice. However, teaching students concepts of rigour and how to apply them to their research is challenging. This article presents a generic framework of rigour with four critical dimensions—Trustworthiness, Auditability, Credibility and Transferability (TACT) intended to teach issues of rigour to postgraduate students and those new to qualitative research methodology. The framework enables them to explore the key dimensions necessary for assessing the rigour of qualitative research studies and checklist questions against each of the dimensions. TACT was offered through 10 workshops, attended by 64 participants. Participants positively evaluated the workshops and reported that the workshops enable them to learn the principles of qualitative research and better understanding issues of rigour. Work presented in the article is part of a large research programme investigating the pedagogy of research methods in higher education.